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Just like Jackson did; he rearranged many things; but the books are still there, on my shelf, unabridged, unedited and reliable.
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Ah, but this is the point I’m working through here…the text itself is unedited by anyone else’s interpretation, but how “reliable” is it, really? We’ve moved away a bit from where we started, I think, insofar as we’re talking more and more about the kinds of ‘adding’ that come about through rewriting the text in whatever way (e.g. fanfiction, rpg-ing, speculation). This is really my fault, I know, as I simply could not resist those six-armed bark eaters! But to return to the point that I really wanted to address…
Interpretation of the text in the sense that I’m working with as it pertains to the
meaning and not just the factual accounts of the narrative – how much freedom do we have in this act? I accept that I cannot willy-nilly make up new elements of Middle-Earth (and that list you’ve provided
Mark 12:30 from Pio is remarkably useful and concise in this), but I do enjoy a certain latitude in interpreting what is already on the page, even if that interpretation goes against Tolkien’s own, do I not?
The example I can use here is the climactic moment of
LotR as Gollum goes into the fire. This moment has been clearly interpreted for us by Tolkien himself in the
Letters (and elsewhere); he says that the struggle and moral choices of Frodo and the other heroes have lead to this moment, and brought about the right circumstances in which God’s finger ‘intrudes’ into the story and ‘pushes’ Gollum into the fire. (I don’t have my books with me at the moment so I can’t check his exact wording.) But there are at least two other ways I can interpret this same moment, without questioning/rewriting the ‘facts’ of it:
1. Gollum falls in by pure chance. There is no ‘push’ from outside the event by Providence, Eru or Anyone else. It’s just dumb luck that saves the day.
2. Gollum jumps in himself – the last bit of him that is Smeagol realises that he cannot hope to keep the Ring for his own, so he chooses to end his life in possession of the Ring rather than face having it taken from him again, OR perhaps he even does it with his last shred of goodness to save the world, OR perhaps he does it in response to Frodo’s earlier ‘command’ in the Emyn Muil (“If I should command you to throw yourself into the fire when I had it [the Ring] on, you would be compelled to do so” – again, I’m not sure this is exactly right).
I’m not actually trying to argue for any of these interpretations, I only give them to point out that they are all at least possible: they are all supported by the facts of the book, and each one of them makes sense. The only grounds we have to reject these interpretations in favour of Tolkien’s own is that Tolkien, as the sub-creator of this world, has more ‘right’ than the reader to declare what’s ‘true’.
And here we go back to the quote that Bêthberry has wonderfully provided us with:
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I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
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As soon as we declare that Tolkien’s interpretation is ‘right’ and all others ‘wrong’ we are, in effect, becoming Nazgûl to Tolkien’s Sauron! We are claiming that the only source of truth in Middle-Earth is Tolkien’s and giving way, gleefully, to the “purposed domination of the author”. We get to be ‘right’ about the work and everyone else is ‘wrong’ because we’ve read the
Letters and know what’s what, while others not so enlightened are out there crazily and wrongly coming up with what they want to about the world.
But it gets even more complicated!!! To declare that my interpretation number one (above) is right, is to call into question the whole moral fabric of Middle-Earth, as it was conceived by its sub-creator. Just because a particular reader does not believe in Providence, does not mean that he can make the history of Middle-Earth non-providential, for that history is not of the primary world, but of Tolkien’s secondary world. Eru is as ‘real’ as Frodo or the Silmarils, so we can’t question Him or His plan. But then where is the “applicability” of the text for a reader who interprets Gollum’s fall in manner number one?
So we get stuck, I think, between some hard choices. On the one hand, we want to accept Tolkien’s authority on how to interpret this moment, since it is his world after all (Eru/Providence pushed Gollum) – but to do this is to give way to the “purposed domination of the author”. On the other hand, we want to interpret this moment for ourselves, since we are the ones reading it after all (it’s possible to read Gollum’s fall as blind luck) – but to do this we put in jeopardy the “applicability” of the tale by questioning, or overthrowing outright, the ‘rules’ of Tolkien’s secondary world in favour of our own understanding of the primary world.
I do hope that this overly long post makes sense – if anyone gets to the end of it, let me know and I will throw a few reputation points your way as a thank you.